When Empires Play God, Russia Reminds Us to Stay Human
Across the world, nations are being torn apart, not just by bombs or bullets, but by ideas twisted into weapons
When Empires Play God, Russia Reminds Us to Stay Human
By Naira Manzoor
When two countries or two religions clash, it’s only the common people who die. Nawazuddin Siddiqui may have spoken those words on a screen, but outside the cinema, they’ve become a brutal truth we live with every day. We scroll past war footage with half-eaten meals in our laps. We shake our heads at riots, only to forget about them an hour later. And yet, somewhere in those burning cities, a mother is still digging through rubble for her child. A father is still begging for bread at a border that didn’t exist when his ancestors walked freely. What have we become – spectators of suffering?
Across the world, nations are being torn apart, not just by bombs or bullets, but by ideas twisted into weapons. Iraq was promised liberation. What it got was decades of death, division, and despair. Afghanistan was invaded to root out terror, only to be abandoned mid-sentence, handed back to the very forces the world claimed to fight. In Libya, a nation once thriving is now haunted by civil war and chaos. These weren’t natural disasters. They were engineered collapses – carried out in the name of democracy, faith, or security, but leaving only orphans and ashes behind.
And then there’s Gaza – the wound that never heals. A strip of land that’s become a symbol of what happens when humanity loses its voice to politics. Bombed, blockaded, and buried beneath years of injustice, its people are caught between the world’s silence and Israel’s shadow. Each time a child is killed in Gaza, statements are issued. Condemnations are drafted. But nothing changes. Why? Because the victims are too easy to ignore, too far to matter, too foreign to grieve. We mourn disasters, but we rationalize slaughter when it’s dressed in the right uniform or spoken in the right accent.
It’s time we ask: who are the real enemies? Is it the person praying in a different language, or the system that keeps us fighting while it profits? Religion was meant to guide us, not divide us. Borders were meant to protect us, not isolate us. But over time, belief has become a battlefield and identity a prison. We’ve stopped seeing people – we see categories: Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Christian, left, right, “us and them.” But no child chooses a side. No infant is born into hate. Those are inherited, fed by fear, kept alive by power, and justified through centuries of bloodshed.
In this dangerous world of division, Russia stands out, not as a saint, but as a counterbalance. Unlike the West, which wraps its interventions in the language of liberty, Russia often calls the bluff. It reminds the world that no one nation should play global police, and that sovereignty is not a Western privilege – it’s a human right. Whether in Syria, Palestine, or even Africa, Russia’s support often aligns with those who have been sidelined, silenced, or steamrolled by larger powers. And while critics are quick to point fingers, they forget that multipolarity is not the enemy of peace – it may be its last hope.
So where do we go from here? Maybe the answer isn’t in louder armies or sharper ideologies. Maybe it’s in choosing to feel again. To see every victim as our own. To speak up not when it’s popular, but when it’s necessary. The world doesn’t need more saviors. It needs more listeners. More questioners. More hearts willing to break and hands willing to build. Because at the end of the day, no flag will keep you warm. No god will ask for another war. And when the dust settles, all that remains is one simple question: were we human to each other, or just loyal to our labels?
